The US Supreme Court Thread - Post Roe v. Wade reversal edition

My boss (Senator Wyche Fowler) voted for Thomas. And while I won't reveal any of the details of conversations myself and a couple other staff members had with him, it was not a vote he was happy about. In fact, he and Sam Nunn both voted for Georgia native Thomas. He then lost his reelection bid in 1992 (in a runoff), so he was out of the Senate long before Alito was nominated to the Supreme Court.

Worth noting that Alito was confirmed to the Third Circuit by unanimous consent in 1990---a year Dems controlled the Senate. It's an example of how circuit court nominations weren't really fought back then unless there was a huge red flag.

 

Agreed, she should have been taken even more seriously than she was, but I'll add from being there, Thomas was on track to sail through confirmation fairly easily before her allegations arose. She actually made the vote fairly close.

 

Yeah, this is how I remember it. And when Hill became widely known, it became "Do you go with the Black man or the Black woman?" Personally, I was leaning towards Hill because I just couldn't believe that she would lie about that coke can thing.

 

She was very reluctant to come forward. Her FBI vetting interview got leaked to the press and all hell exploded.

 

Purely anecdotal, but my take from being there was that many of the Dems who still ended up voting for Thomas did so purely for political lifespan reasons, not because they found Professor Hill lacking in credibility.

And no, I'm not defending that rationale.

 

In a surprise, SCOTUS upholds a lower court decision that a religious charter school cannot get public funding.

https://apnews.com/article/supreme-...arter-school-170e3701926e29ea5072eb50f0db97b6

You should read it. Oh, hell, let me quote the ruling.

The judgment is affirmed by an equally divided Court.​

Profound (yes, I know, this is far from unusual). But, of note, ACB abstained.

https://apnews.com/article/supreme-...arter-school-170e3701926e29ea5072eb50f0db97b6

Only eight of the nine justices took part in the case. Justice Amy Coney Barrett didn’t explain her absence, but she is good friends and used to teach with Notre Dame law professor Nicole Garnett, who has been an adviser to the school.

...

The court, following its custom, did not provide a breakdown of the votes. But during arguments last month, four conservative justices seemed likely to side with the school, while the three liberals seemed just as firmly on the other side.

That left Chief Justice John Roberts appearing to hold the key vote, and suggests he went with the liberals to make the outcome 4-4. ​

 

She recused, which (sorry to be ticky tacky) is different from abstaining. Shows she actually has some ethics. Thomas and Alito ask: what's that?

 

As I was typing, I'm going "abstain is not right..Whatever."

 

But...but...it depends.

 

They've been going after her for a while. Caught something on twitter a couple (?) weeks ago calling her a communist or something similar.